This Texas Ranger Hall ofRights Reserved. Contact Texas Ra

INTERVIEW WITH

CAPTAIN M. T. “LONE WOLF” GONZAULLAS

TEXAS RANGER, RETIRED

PROJECT:

THE TEXAS RANGERS

INTERVIEW CONDUCTED AT REED CEMETERY

CAPTAIN M. T. “LONE WOLF” GONZAULLAS

NEW BOSTON, TEXAS

July, 1957

INTERVIEWED BY:

STACY KEACH, SR.

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2006 by theTexas Ranger Hall of Fame and Museum

All Rights Reserved.

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Lone Wolf Gonzaullas

Talks About the East Texas Oil Field

This recording is pertaining to Dan McDuffy a Texas Ranger at Gladewater, Texas,

Gregg County in the late part of 1930 and the description of the East Texas oil field which is

considered Gregg County in East Texas and the types of people, the houses, business

establishment and so forth at the time of the oil boom there. Stacy this is in compliance with your

letter of June 9, 1953 requesting this recording. As you know in that period of we did not make

any ah....written reports or we did some times make them, but there was very few in existence

and I am going to have to record this one strictly from ah....memory, I don’t have my ah....scrap

books here and I don’t have any notes and I’ll just have to skip back and just do some hard

thinking. I’ll start out this way, I believe it would be good to give you a little description of the

East Texas oil field because this recording, as I say, is pertaining to the death of Dan McDuffy,

Ranger Dan McDuffy. However, it is possible that in the future you may want some recordings

of some events that occurred in the East Texas oil field back in that period and if you do why this

recording would take care of quite a bit of the other things, the description of the towns and the

type of people and so forth and that.

At the time of this occur[ance] Dan McDuffy was killed I was Sergeant in Company B,

Texas Rangers. Captain Tom Hickman was Captain and he stayed at Fort Worth and I was in

charge of the East Texas oil field, which was at Gregg County. I was stationed at Kilgore, Texas,

that was the town right close to where they discovered oil, right near there they discovered the

oil and it was a small town although it was the nearest town to the discovery of oil in that area.

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At the time I arrived there why it was not much of a town, there was a few wooden houses there

and a little railroad station and they.....it was .....the streets were muddy when it rained and the

water was bad, there was a few stores there, it was purely just a one horse town if there ever was

one. Then of course that was preceding .....rather about the time I arrived there was a..... it was

just preceding my arrival there. Well they struck oil in that immediate vicinity and of course

there was a terrific influx of people. The people came from all over the country, this country and

I suppose they come from foreign countries. At the time why there was.....I don’t believe there

was any other oil booms in existence and times were very hard, money was very tight. It was in

the 1930’s, I think it was in the latter part of 1930. You couldn’t get no accommodations to live

any place and the....you couldn’t really travel because it was nasty and wet, we used our horses,

we had cars at that time, but we .....and we had horses also. But most of the time our cars were

up somewhere because you couldn’t hardly travel. It was common to ride scout through the

streets and places and that vicinity and when you come in your horse was covered with mud,

splashed and going through it. It was common to ride through the mud where you had to pull

your feet.....hold your feet up to keep from dragging your stirrups in the mud, they’d go down to

the belly in it lots of times. The street conditions were very horrible as far as weather conditions,

rained an awful lot. The drinking water was very bad, it was alum water and every time you’d

drink it your mouth would pull up all out of shape and so forth. Well you couldn’t hardly

have.....there was no place to stay, there was no hotels, no rooming houses or anything.

I stayed with old mother Crim who later on became the mother of the East Texas oil field

and at the present time has numerous, numerous wells there, even has them in her front yard at

the present time. But I stayed at her house and she gave me a room there and I was the only

Ranger come in. I was called in there because they made an appeal to the Governor that the

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undesirable elements from all over the country had come on in with the working people and that

thing were in very bad shape, in every way you look at it. There was no city, there was no town,

there was no police department, it didn’t exist, it was just a little old town and the only law

enforcement officers there was the Constable and a Deputy, who handled his precinct. There was

no jail and it was very, very, very bad. The streets were wooden sidewalks, the shacks

were....they were starting to build shacks, they were starting to build rooming houses and they

was building little hotels. I remember you could get a good meal for 25 cents, ham and eggs and

......or bacon and eggs and coffee and toast was a quarter, people were pan handling on the street.

And above all, people didn’t have .....men wanted to work, really men who wanted to work

couldn’t find any work because they .....it was just at the first part of the boom, everybody didn’t

know what was going to happen. And they had no place to stay, no place to eat and besides that

they had no money.

As I say, things were very bad. Now as things progressed along we finally had to build a

jail there, but we had to have a jail of some sort. So I went down to the hardware store and I

secured from the .....from Mr. Crim, Malcolm Crim who owned the big hardware store, a chain,

oh I guess it was a city block long, maybe not quite that long. But anyway, it was a long chain

that he had hanging all around his store on little posts, that drooped from one post to the other

where you used to tie your horses on it, that you would do in these small towns. And I took this

here chain and I .....then I put about a hundred trace chains on that there, slipped ‘em on there

and from there I put pad locks on the trace chains and then I used that for my jail. Well at first I

opened a little jail in kind of a seed store, it wasn’t very big, an old kind of a seed storage

building, an old frame building, but it wasn’t very good and the rats was awful bad and all. So

finally they had a little old church in town, which I don’t know the denomination of the church,

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but anyway it was a little old church and this church the people would sleep in there at night and

they sleep in there at night and they loused the place up so bad that when Sunday came and the

people.... the local people in town come on to have a church meeting, why the fleas were so bad

in there that the little town people there couldn’t stand it, the fleas like to ate ‘em up. So finally

they.... and finally the citizens there decided well to give the church to anybody who wanted to

sleep in it. But finally I ended up with it for a jail, and it was a church first and then it was finally

a jail. So I chopped a few holes in the floor on each end and run the trace chain ...... I ran the

chains through that and hung out this chain. And then I put the trace chains on the long chain and

then I put a .....the Constable, or a Deputy, one or the other done picket duty and he’d sit up

where the preacher used to sit, where he’d make his talk from, pulpit up there, and he’d sit there

and watch ‘em with a shotgun. And of course when they ah.....we put the men on there we put

the chains around the men’s ankles and we put..... and the women would be on the opposite end

we’d put the chains ....well we’d put the chains on the women’s ankle and the chains on the

men’s.....around their necks with a pad lock on it. And we never lost any and of course when

they wanted to go to the rest room or anything why they just passed the bucket. And of course it

was a very good thing because we had no place to lock up anyone. The nearest jail was about 15

miles, was the county seat at Longview, and it took in the mud and everything, it would take you

all day to get there and back to haul your prisoners in there. So we made that as a temporary hold

over jail to keep our .....anybody we picked up.

Now another thing you could had a very good .....whether it acted as a .....as a psychology

I guess you would say, affect on ....on the peop....on the undesirables. For instance, a fella would

come to town who we knew was an outlaw and he probably wasn’t wanted right then but he’d

always been a stick up man or an ex-convict or something, he come there for the purpose of

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making a living in some unlawful manner. Why as soon as he’d hit town why we’d just put him

on the chain, because we knew that he’d come there to clean somebody. And of course some of

those fellas had quite a long reputations and they were feared by the working people and

everyone else. We’d put ‘em on the chain and of course would come along there and they’d look

at ‘em through these windows all along the ....we had the windows were out, we kept the

windows out, we didn’t.....so they could just look in and they had plenty of air in the building,

we didn’t want ‘em to comfortable, and they would look in there and they’d ridicule these fellas

on the chain. Well these criminals they couldn’t stand to be ridiculed, so they would always say,

“If you’d just let me off this chain I’ll get out of town and never come back”. That .....it had a

good affect on them. We were always picking up people for suspected of being different type

criminals and weeding out the working man from the undesirables. Now one of our methods of

that would be we’d go up to a.....we’d go into a dance hall, a 49 dance hall, we’d go into some of

these different kind of little joints where the people would be, like domino parlors and things like

that, or down in the district where the girls were, we’d go down there and we would see a half a

dozen men around, why we’d just say, ‘All right boys let’s see your hands’. Now we’d look at

their hands, they’d all......finally they got .....whenever they’d see us coming along they’d put

their hands out in front of them. We’d looked at their hands, if their hands was real smooth we

knew they wasn’t a working man and if they were real rough, like a working man’s hand, why

we just told ‘em, ‘Well go ahead about your business’. Now if they were real smooth and they

looked like that they were pimps or gamblers or thugs or some other kind of outlaw then we

immediately put ‘em on the chain. Because it was .....we just wanted to keep crime down. Then

of course we drag ‘em, sometimes we’d catch guns on ‘em, sometimes we would catch ‘em

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clean. But we’d make the rounds around and of course the same with the pimps and the various

types of criminals. They’d come in there from all over the country.

Now the....as I say the shacks were coming up, the rooming houses were coming up and

it was really a boom town. I refer you Stacy to some of the pictures in the book that I sent you

quite some time ago about the ....the....I believe it’s in the book pertaining to the Crim family I

believe it is, or the Thompson family, it’s about a logging industry over in East Texas. It shows

you some of the boom parts of that, and I refer you also to some other special edition of the

Kilgore paper that I sent you that showed all kinds of pictures of the boom there. I’m just trying

to give you a description of this place.

Now not 15 miles from there, east of there, is a town called Gladewater, Texas, it’s in the

same county, Gregg County. Now the same conditions existed over there, that was a boom town

too, it’s all in the same county. Now over there they had the mud and the muck and they also

didn’t have a jail, it was just a little crossroads place, there was no streets and it was just rough

and tough. And they influxed in there from all over the country also. Now ah....then at that place

they had no jail so they later on they built....later on.....there was no city, no government and

later on they did incorporate and make it a little town and they elected a Mayor of the town just

like they did later at Kilgore and they appointed a Chief of Police at Kilgore and they also

appointed one at Gladewater. But as soon as the first thing they did why then they started to find

a place to built some kind of a jail. But their first jail at Gladewater was a kind of a log structure

and it was more like a stockade, it was logs looked like you see in moving pictures or story

books, Indian stockades made out of logs and inside of that they had bullpen. Now a bull pen is

where prisoners run around and they have a chain on there on the floor and they just had the

chain inside of that place. Then they had a snorten pole on that too. Now if you don’t know what

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a snorten pole is Stacy and Chuck, a snorten pole is a post or a pole, you can call it either one,

it’s a long post that’s driven in the ground and it has a ring in the top of it and then it has a chain

on it and then they chain you, fasten you on that....on that post. And if you’re real rough and

tough they let you stand up by yourself in the jail, I mean it’s a place where they can watch you,

you can’t pull that thing out of the ground. And that’s a snorten post they call ‘em. So they had

one of those there also. Now ah....they were a little more modern over there at Gladewater, they

had a little section there for the women and then they had a section for the men, but they were

bull pens that were same way. But both towns were about the same way.

Then right close by there about 15 miles the other direction was the county seat of the

county, Gregg County. And of course that was a nice little town, it’s just a little city, they have

paved streets, a nice courthouse and everything else and a pretty good jail. But of course when

we arrested prisoners we couldn’t haul ‘em every day so we had to keep enough there until we

got a truck load of ‘em and then we sent ‘em over to the county seat. As times progressed a little

long and we needed a little more help, I couldn’t be all over, there was little towns popping up

all in the area adjoining there and Henderson county there was some towns popped up near

Henderson. Then there was a place called Pistol Hill adjoining Kilgore, Laird’s Hill, that popped

and there was a little hamlet, a little settlement of houses and stores and shacks come there and

made a little town of it.

Then there was Overton and all of the adjoining counties, two more counties there came

right in, so it made a pretty big field, was coming along pretty fast and they were influxing from

all different directions. So I’ve been working day and night so I had to have a little help. So

Captain sent me an additional Ranger named Bob Goss and Bob came over and gave me a lift.

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And as the field came along we preceded on and we policed that whole area, we scouted

that whole area horseback and worked hard. And it was common for the....and for Saturday night

to have a hundred on the chain. And we weeded ‘em down of all different times. We picked up

escape convicts, we picked up hijacking......hijacking was quite bad over there and it was quite a

few killings and .....but the thing is we wanted to get the .....the.....pick up the big shot criminals

as fast as they hit there before they could get organized and get bedded in and built in the place.

Now we also had to, as times come along we had to increase our force there because after all one

man can only be at one place at a time. Two men at two different places is they are separated and

sometime we had to be up day and night, so therefore we had to have additional men.

So therefore we .....the Captain assigned another Ranger to Gladewater and his name was

Dan McDuffy, Dan McDuffy....McDUFFY, a very fine boy, a fearless officer and very, very

fearless and a good man hunter, a good fighter and an all around good little Irishman. And

ah....Dan had another Ranger stationed with him named Bill Dowell.... DOWELL I believe his

name is Dowell, Bill Dowell. So Bill Dowell and McDuffy stayed at Gladewater and I stayed

with Bob Goss over at Kilgore. And that divided the territory up and thereby we handled that

whole East Texas field. That was a later part as a times were progressing along. And you

couldn’t go very fast no where’s at no time, so you had to have men in the field, was spreading

out, was going up topping up all over, there was shacks and even ....where they didn’t have

shacks they even had tents or they had ah....anyway they could sleep, any place they sleep they

would go in, because they had to have some place to sleep and some place to eat. And as I say,

things were bad and it made it much worse because that caused a lot of people to steal and rob

from each other. Now ah.....that.....I wanted to give you a little description of that because I feel

that maybe you could use those things later on.

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Now of course you know Gregg county is the northern part of East Texas, it’s in the

timber belt, it was called the piney wooded area and it’s right on the Sabine River....SABINE.

Now at that time before....when they struck.....at that time they had quite a few saw mills in the

timber country. There was cotton growing, there was corn, hay and grain. Sweet potatoes,

tomatoes, fruit and peanuts, they had some cattle, not too much cattle, it was kind of scrounchy

cattle, kind of a tick bit cattle and ah....lots of hogs. I guess they get their hogs because it’s not

too far from Arkansas I guess, but there’s lots of razorbacks. And mosquito were awful bad,

mosquito were awful bad over there. And of course malaria is very bad in that area and quite a

few of the people have chills and fever and it’s common to see a family come into a store and the

first they want, they want some chill tonic and snuff, that’s the two main things. And if they

didn’t have any money to buy anything else, they’ll buy chill tonic and snuff, because they dip a

lot over there. Now it’s a marshy country, very marshy and wooded, and lots of creeks, lots of

creeks. It’s one of the few places that I ever did see where it’s marshy up on the hill and

sometime not marshy down in the bottoms. Lots of wood, underbrush, it’s a sandy and sandy

clay soil in that area. Now as I stated before that’s Gladewater and Kilgore. Now they also have

a town right in there also, Greggton... GREGGTON, that popped up in .....popped up from the

discovery of oil. Then there’s Fox City, and then there’s Elderville and there’s an

Easton....EASTON. They all come up and they all increased in population.

When you stop to think about it, when you stop to think about it, at Gladewater how

population of 500 people, 500 people in 1930 and it went up to ah....oh it went up into the

thousands and thousands and of course today it’s a nice city. And Kilgore had a population of

590 and it now.....and when they struck oil and ah....of course right over in a few days way it was

up to a terrific population, the influx was hardly believable. They’d push you off the sidewalk,

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fist fights, people were having fights on the street and it’s just like you see pictures or read books

about, they’d fight and then they’d go out in the mud and fight there and everybody’s standing

there watching ‘em and let ‘em fight. And knife fights and every kind of thing, because they

were rough necks and all kind of elements in the field. But there was lots of mud, typical boom

town, wooden sidewalks and shacks towns. And lots of prostitutes, lots of gamblers, and the

merchants were .....there was some legitimate merchants, legitimate merchants there and there

was lots that came in to try to clean up during the boom. And naturally they.....it was the same

kind of people that I had made a .....just gave a recording before of something like ah....over

around Ranger, Texas, a similar thing only.....well similar to that only a later date. Now

ah....going into this ah.....and I refer you to the different records we have of ....about these boom

towns to the ah.....the book that I referred....quoted you before, the Handbook of Texas, gives

you a lot about the Texas Almanac and also these....that articles I sent you of that big thick paper

that was printed, the anniversary of the oil field at Kilgore. Of course today Kilgore is the oil city

of the world I think.

Now I wanted to give you that description before I went into the McDuffy deal. I don’t

know too much about some of that McDuffy deal because .....and I think Stacy you

misunderstood, you stated in your letter that you believed that I was in the car. No I wasn’t in the

car when it happened. But I am.... I know about the deal and I got there right quick. After all

these men were under me and he was working under me when it happened. As I say they

were.....Dan was a fearless officer and they had a Chief of Police .....now I ...I’m trusting strictly

to memory, I don’t know this fella’s name, I remember the jailers name there, but I think his

name was Dickerson, I don’t know. And ah... the Chief of Police I believe at that time was

Tinney, that’s TINNEY, Tinney.....TINY, Tiny Hughes, HOUGHES, he was chief. He gets his

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name Tiny because he was so monstrous, he was a great big man. Now ah....he was Chief of

Police and he hired a jailer, I think his name was Dickerson, we’ll call him Dickerson. And

ah....this fella here he was a local product from that area and not to bright, quite over bearing

ah.....quite a fighter and a bully, but he was made the jailer to supervise the handling of the

prisoners in the jail at Gladewater. That’s where Dan was, Dan McDuffy and Bill Dowell, they

operated in that area. Now ah....they received good cooperation from the Chief of Police, but this

Dickerson they never did receive much from him. He was quite a drinker, the jailer was, and he

had a reputation about chasing the women awful bad. And it kind of be....it finally became quite

noticeable that he would ah.....he couldn’t keep his hands off of the women prisoners brought in

there.

Now.....now you understand prisoners brought into a jail ah....some of the are prostitutes,

but they’re not all prostitutes and some of them are pretty good women of certain standard, they

may be drunk or something, but a good woman could be arrested being drunk too you know. But

it’s....it’s..... it is absolutely a kind of an unforgivable sin and it’s very unethical for an officer to

put his hands on a women, I mean to attempt to get out of line, to make a pass at or try to have an

affair with a woman when she’s in his custody. That is something that’s just one of those things

that we just don’t ....it’s just not done. And this fella here, this night jailer, or this jailer rather, he

became .....apparently the fact that he was playing around with them and ....and two or three of

them he allegedly monkeyed with. Of course you can’t use this in the story but I understood he

put one on the snorten pole, chained her on a pole one time and took some of it. But nevertheless

he .... finally the Chief of Police found it out and he fired him, he fired him. And of course that

made bad blood between the Chief of Police and this fella Dickerson, the jailer. And this fella

Dickerson made a lot of talks that he’s going to kill the Chief. And he....every once in awhile

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why ....periodically why this ex-jailer he would get drunk and when he’d get drunk he’d go get

his pistol or a rifle....or go get a pistol and he’d go up town and he’d be making some bad talks

about the Chief, that he was going to kill him when he met him. Of course it always got down to

the police station and finally the Chief he didn’t ever bother him, I mean he didn’t kill him or

anything, but he just kept it in mind, he was a cool headed sort of fella. But anyway, he....the

people always interceded, in other words ah... different men interceded and would take this fella

home and put him to bed or talk him out of getting too rambunctious about it you know, they

would just intercede and didn’t want any trouble between him and the Chief of Police. There was

always those fellas that was kind of good Samaritans in town and so ah....that’s what happened.

And so this....this day that this thing happened, the death of Dan McDuffy, why ah.....a

report came down to police station.....now I was in Kilgore with Bob Goss when it happened and

Bill Dowell and Dan McDuffy was over there and they ah..... a report came into the police

station that ah....that the ex-jailer was up town and he had a rifle, a lot of ammunition and he

was.....he was telling everybody he’d come to town to ......he was drunk and he’d come

especially to kill the Chief of Police. And of course the word went down, people broke their neck

to get the word to the police station and when the word got down there why ....to the Chief what

happened why he went out and got his shotgun and put it in the car and started to get in the car.

When he did, about that time why ah....McDuffy and Dowell came up, the Rangers did and asked

him “What’s cooking, where are you going”. And he told ‘em what happened, and he says,

“Well wait a minute, we’ll go with you, something may happen, let’s just don’t....just don’t be

too hasty, maybe we can quiet him down”. So the Chief got behind the wheel, as I say he was a

big monstrous man, I believe they were in a Ford, an old Ford, and he got behind the wheel and

he took up a lot behind the wheel. And Bill Dowell got in the back seat, now Bill Dowell had his

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ah....his rifle and ah.... with him and he took that off his horse and put it in the back seat and Dan

McDuffy took his and put it in the car with him. Now Dan McDuffy took the seat to the right of

he driver, on the front seat sitting next to the driver. And they went up town hunting this ex-jailer

and while they were up there why Dan turned to the Chief and he told him he said, “Listen

Chief”, he says, “There he is, there he comes down the street, do you see him”. He says, “Yes,

here he comes down, he’s got his rifle in his hand”. He says, “Tell you what you do now”, he

says, “Let’s stop, now he don’t like you, but let’s stop right here and let me get out and I’ll go up

and talk to him and get the damn gun off of him, try to get it off of him and take him home”. And

ah....he says, “All right”. So just about that second they stopped the car and just as they stopped

the car this jailer noticed ‘em .....noticed ‘em. Well he ups with the rifle and he took a dead aim

at the car, the car was headed right down the street not to far, maybe ah.... ah....maybe 50 yards

I’d say, I don’t know, about 50 yards away from this ....the jailer from this car. So ....and he’s

facing the car and he takes a dead aim at this car and he fires. And he’s.... as I say he’s drunk, but

ah....and he’s mean as hell, always been mean and so he fires and the bullet hits the windshield.

Now it hits the windshield right in front of the Chief of Police, it comes through the windshield,

this 30/30 rifle, it comes right through the windshield and hits the steering wheel, the front of the

steering wheel which is closest to the windshield and chips a hole out of that and of course that

..... inside of that there’s a metal interior part, chips that rubber or what ever it is around there

and instead of the bullet going straight on which would of killed the.....or hit Tiny, the Chief of

the Police, the man it probably was intended for, instead of that why when it hit that metal and

that steering wheel it ricocheted to the right. It ricocheted right down and hit Dan McDuffy who

was sitting next to the Chief, right smack in the belly. It hit him in the belly and cut his.....he had

a watchchain that hung across the front with a fob on it, it cut that right in half, hit Mc in the

15

belly. Well Mc raised up as soon as he got hit in the belly, he raised up and reached and grabbed

his rifle, then sunk down dead, just one gasp and he was dead.

Well now Bill Dowell was in the back seat.....now Tiny couldn’t get out of the damn car,

as fat as he is, if he tried to, if he got shot at all day because he was a monstrous man. So Bill

Dowell, who was on the right ....in the right hand back seat, the right side of the back seat, he has

his rifle handy, jerks his rifle up quick, he hangs out of the side of the car and takes an aim on

this jailer who’s up the street about 50 feet....or 50 yards or whatever it is, up the road a ways,

has a dead aim on him and pumps him full of lead, I think he hit him five times before he could

hit the ground and he kills him deader than hell. So that ended that deal immediately.

Of course just like a cyclone, it happened and it was over. Immediately the boys....I was

in charge of the boys and immediately I got word that Dan McDuffy had been killed, we

didn’t.....at Gladewater. So the first thing I done was jumped in my car and Bob.....we were on

the horses and we left our horses there and jumped in a car and as fast as we could make 15

miles over there, and it was dry at that time, as fast as we could make over to Gladewater 15

mile, we just hit on high and drove over there, rolled right in town thinking all the time we

drove.

Well now we didn’t know who killed him, all we had, the report was he was killed. So

ah....of course we had made up our mind on that trip over there that God help the man who killed

the Ranger Dan McDuffy because we’d hunt him down for the rest of our lives. But....and we...

all kind of things run through our mind and we had our mind made up and everything as we went

along and well planned what we would do. And ah....we didn’t have any of the particulars, all we

knew that Dan McDuffy had been shot to death on the street. So when we got there ah....Dan was

up at the combination undertaking establishment and hardware store, they had kind of a morgue

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behind the hardware store, he was up there and I went up right away and looked at him and then

took charge of his effects, his pocket book, his commission and his guns and stuff and well

immediately found out what happened. And we found out in a little while what happened and

what happened which I just recorded to you, explained to you rather.

So it was....there was no one to arrest, there was no one to hunt down and kill off, but

ah....for killing the Ranger, that’s what happened, that was the detail of the whole thing. There

was ah....a little talk, conversation in about and around that the family, somebody in his family,

had made a......we allegedly heard that some of his kin folks or some of his family, the boys in

the family spoke, they said that they ah....that their father was killed at so and so but that they

were going to take care of it. But we sent word out that we were willing and ready for ‘em, if

they wanted anything be accommodated why that’s what we were there for to accommodate ‘em.

And we never heard no more about it, the fact is everything hushed up and cleaned up. But that

was the deal and ah....it happened as I say in the East Texas oil field.

Immediately there after of course we watched things pretty careful to see whether there

was any reaction to the shooting and there was none and the grand jury of course met and

exonerated Bill Dowell as justifiable homicide with defense of his fellow officer, and defense of

his own life. And everything was cleared up in good shape legally and we took the body of Dan

McDuffy to his home town, New Boston over towards Texarkana and at that place why we had

his funeral. He was .... the whole Company turned out, B Company entirely, with the Captain,

myself and the Sergeant, in those days we had a Captain, a Sergeant and the whole company and

ah....we were pall barer, I was one of the pallbearers and he was buried with a Texas flag over

him and he was buried with the full honors of a Ranger with a Texas flag over his coffin. We

buried him at the little cemetery at New Boston. And there never was a better Ranger that ever

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carried gun, wore a badge, or wore a pair of boots, he was a good Ranger, he was fearless,

(unintelligible).....to a degree of good judgment, he had good judgment and he was well liked

and he was honest, courageous and we missed him very much. His family, he comes from a very

fine family, Dan does, a little fella, not too big, well maybe my size, reddish face, but a little fire

eater, I mean he was a typical Ranger and a good one.

And ah....so then we proceeded on with the enforcement of the law in those.....we went

back to duty after the funeral and carried on and buried our dead and carried on. We had no

reaction of that, but we stayed right in there and pitched in the East Texas field, we worked day

and night in the mud and the muck, we enforced the law without favoritism to anyone, but with

common sense and good judgment. But it was a terrific big field. I mention the field, I got plenty

of recording time on this hour here and filling in and it was a terrific big field. In that period of

time there was no wells in the.....inside the city they were all out in the.....in the....were not in the

little towns, I mean they were out in the rural areas. And of course it’s not like today where they

are all over the streets and in the yards and everything else. But she was a booming town. There

was everything that ever was in any oil field ever existed came to East Texas. If they were still

living the boomers from all over, the various types of boomer, the merchants who wanted to

make their money on the ....was on the working class and on the .....that sold the flashy silk shirts

to the pimps, their business managers, and to the ah.....and to the gamblers and all of those that

were unscrupulous type that was just.....they ah....they were legitimate but they followed booms,

they got big prices for their stuff. And they just followed booms, making it quick just like the

other type people. There were these doctors who were some were good and some were bad,

some were kind of shady and they were just doctors who specialized in giving you a shot or

treating you for some venereal disease. And ah....they ah.....if they had to perform an operation

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why they some little 2 x 4 room, filthy places. I mean conditions were just typical boom town,

mud, muck was awful. They ah....you may be interested to know the.....they naturally started a

red light district. The boys had to have some place to go and there was quite a few, oh what they

called, down in the red light district, why down near the railroad tracks. I don’t know why they

always put ‘em near railroad track, but seemed to. And we’d go down there and we’d prowl

down there day and night. You remember Stacy, you went to see it, you’ve been in Kilgore. You

remember the ...... well I took you down there and showed you where the district used to be. The

old Corsicana Hotel and all those places and Mahara Hotel and all those places that used to be

down there. Well they were all.....in those days we used to ride horses down there, I rode up on

this wooden sidewalks with my horse many a times. Fact is I rode in the.....had these big double

doors, and I rode into .....right inside many a times in the front putting the horses couple feet

right in the......right smack in the front of one of them places and got off of ‘em. Had to get him

up there, so I could get a dry place to land with ‘em, we’d trot through the mud, be mud all over

‘em. And ah....then when we’d go in there and raid and arrest half a dozen people in one of them

places, I don’t mean just because he’s in there seeing the girls, but there was some.....naturally

criminals are going to go down to the district to start with, soon as they come to town they’re

going to make connection with some girls and if they had.....if they’re outlaws they’ll do that.

And if they’re on escape they’ll naturally go down to the district. Well we’d get ‘em up to take

‘em to the chain and the mud got so bad you know, down in that area that we had to march ‘em

up the side of the hill at the railroad track and march ‘em up on the railroad track. And they’d

have to walk the railroad track into town because we couldn’t march ‘em down the street, the

mud was too bad. And ah....that’s the way.....sometimes I’ve had as high as three and four pair of

boots drying at one time over at Mrs. Crim’s house, just that it rained so much, so much rain. Of

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course we were working night and day, night and day, we just hitting on top, we couldn’t keep

up the place because it was terrific, it was so wide and so.... and ....and they were sleeping all

over as I stated, any place where they could keep warm or keep dry and any place they could

bum meals from, or eat, some of them had a little money, not many of them. And ah.....but they

came there from all over.

All of the characters that I ever knew in any other boom, not preceding my......not

preceding time in my life, and I followed the boom since ‘20 in these oil fields and I just

ah.....since ‘20, ‘21 and all of the ones that was all at the other places.....all they were there, if

they were living, if they hadn’t been killed or in the penitentiary, they were there. And of course

with the legitimate boys, the rough necks, the oil fields boys, which are a fine boy, only they are

rough and they play rough and they keep rough company. And of course you know, this booms

how they dress, they wear these old.....this is a period of time back in ‘31 they wore a lot.....they

wore these lace boots, you don’t see too many of them now. They wore lace boots and corduroy

pants and the winter months and kind of shirts and short......and kind of jackets and any kind of

the stuff that they could get a hold of to wear that would be warm and substantial. And ah....the

rigs when they first..... at that time they were not the big steel rigs they are today, they were the

steel rigs ......they were wooden rigs and they were changed, now they are a lot different. And for

those technical things regarding the production of wells, pipelines and stuff, I refer you to the

....the big newspaper that we gathered up, that edition that I sent you some time ago. It tells you

and shows you pictures and all about the oil field. And a lot of that stuff that I previously sent, I

refer you to that because it would take hours to go on to the detail of the drilling procedure. And

there was slush pits all over and it was common to see fights and fellas throw each other in the

slush pit with the oil and muck and BS, bottom settlement, just when they would fight and all.

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And ah.....she was a dilly, in other words she was a dilly if there ever was one. We had lots of

fights ah.....most of the time, I mean to say, lots of fights. We didn’t have many ah.....I mean we

got along pretty good with everybody because we didn’t take no back talk, we handled and

enforced the law very strict, but we still used common sense and good judgment. We ah.... we

had to be very careful because we were in a period of time there when working boys, men, may

be sleeping around here or there, eating any place he could and you may mistake him for being

no good, but he’s just a poor working boy. And it’s ah.... you got to be careful you don’t put one

of them on the chain by accident because you’d do the man an injustice. So ah....and they all

liked us, the working boys liked us, the people, the ones that came there to work and to make an

honest dollar, they liked the Rangers because they knew the Rangers were there to protect them.

They knew that ah.....that we would keep the outlaws and the hijackers and the murderers and

the thieves and the dope peddlers and all off of them. They knew that they’d have some money

to send home. Then of course in the Kilgore East Texas field it was a lot different than in the

earlier fields up in around ‘20 and ‘21, ‘22, ‘23, because this field here in the Kilgore field, they

did, after things got a little better organized and they got a little better housing with a little

more.....a few hotels, I mean these little frame hotels and shack hotels built and there was some

more restaurants built, why then and there was a few Churches built and they ah.... it came

to.....and a school or two, why then the boys, working boys, started sending for their families.

That’s what makes these towns, when they start sending for the families and they start having

Church and schools, then you know you’re getting somewhere and straightened out. But before

the churches and the schools arrived why she is hell. So ah.... and we had as I say, we didn’t

have any serious things over there, we had to slap a few of ‘em every day or two to let ‘em know

we were running things over there and they’d try you out, there’s always a lot of tuffies who just

21

say, ‘well I’m going to try him out’, and you’d have to give ‘em a whipping or something. And

we had to muss a few of ‘em up, but after all we got the field straightened up pretty good, as the

boy says, pretty cheap considering we didn’t have to have too much serious trouble. Ah.....we

picked up lots of fellas I told you and as fast as we’d pick up escapees, we always carried

the....the....the data with us in the cars and also in our saddle pockets, of a wanted man, escapees

and the oil field is a good place to pick ‘em up, because they can drift in there, because it seems

to be a breach of etiquette to ask a question in the oil field. You may be in the oil field for years

and ah....you may know a fella as Chick, you may know him as Slim or Tuffy or Doc or Blackie,

but you may know him, you’ve seen him for three years in and out of these fields at different

places. But someone would say, “What’s Blackie’s last name”, why hell you don’t know,

nobody knows. This is kind of a breach of etiquette to ask him his last name. So we see those

fellas and through some recordings that I’ll make following this, from up around the earlier

.....(unintelligible).....had some experience that I really had some tough experiences up in the

East up....well in the North Texas field, around Bradley’s Corner, New Town and Wichita and

there. A lot of them fellas I know ‘em as certain names, they had names and they had lots of

names like Screw Top Ray and Curly and California Stepper and Hiney and Gold Tooth Jack

and fellas names like that. Nobody knew what their last name was unless it came to light and that

was both illegitimate and legitimate people. So that’s the way it goes in the oil field, I thought

I’d mention that for you and for both you and Chuck and so you would know about those things.

Many of the fellas I can think of names, of their nicknames, but for the love of me I couldn’t tell

you their last name.

Now Teeny is Chief of Police down there, I don’t know Teeny’s first name, all I ever

heard of him, he was known as Teeny, we all called him Teeny. And so on, that’s the way it goes

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and I understand it’s that way in the lumber camps and different places and it was the way in the

gold rush of the ‘49 in California and so forth. And the same way up in Colorado in the gold rush

days. But ah....that’s they way it was down there. There was lots of good people, lots of very fine

people down there. There was lots of sorry ones. Ah....I lived at Mother Crim’s home, a very fine

old lady and ah.....she’s still living, she’s 90 some years old, went down to see her recently. And

ah.... of course I don’t know how many hundreds of thousands of wells she’s got now, I think

she’s the mother of the East Texas oil field, but she’s a grand old lady. At that time she was so

religious that she owned lots of property in town, they were probably property poor before they

struck oil. But I would say that, but ah....they ah.....she was so religious that she rented property

here and there when they started building houses and buildings on the property. And when

they’d come to her on Sunday to pay her rent or to pay her any money she owed, she says, “No

sir, you come back Monday, I do not accept no money on Sunday, Sunday is a religious day”.

But I did notice that..... I did notice that following after that went on a little while she didn’t

.....she didn’t accept it, but she’d ah....put her.....she had a son by the name of Malcolm, who was

a fine fella, but he’d accept it on Sunday, he had an office over there, so they could .....finally

they learned they’d go over to see Malcolm and he’d accept it on Sunday. So you know time

marches on, they.....they’ve got to ah....ah...do those things. But ah.....Malcolm later became

Mayor. And now at the present time that city is a very fine city, fine sidewalks, colleges, fine

churches, fine sewage, fine everything, it’s one of the finest little cities in the.....of it’s size in

Texas, it’s the oil field of the world now I think, supposed to be. I imagine what they call it, it’s

ah....it’s called the Oil City of the world I believe at the present time. But I don’t know how big

the population got here, but it went on.....it became just awful large. And the houses and shacks

and trailers were scattered all over the whole county. The county was practically bankrupt, they

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were very much in debt. Today I understand it’s one of the richest counties, there oil all over the

county. There are lateral roads, back roads, side roads and all that. Now they ah.....it’s improved

greatly in every way from it’s earlier time.

I finished recording this preceding this one about ah....Stacy.....about ah....Cleo Andrews

and Lacy Cash and ah.....we killed over at Gladewater, Texas in ‘43. That was about 13 years

before this and of course that city has increased quite a bit since then. I mean it’s progressed

along and it’s a very nice city, a nice town, it’s all modern too at the time of these events

preceding of course from the Cash Andrews killing took place why they had nice streets there.

And it was a pretty good....pretty good modern town, just like it is now, well not quite as good,

but it was quite modern and there’s wells all over town there to now and before they used to be

out in the rural area. Greggton’s improved and back roads and lateral roads and all that’s all

greatly improved. They’ve got a modern police department and they got a modern jail there.

Kilgore has a modern police department and a modern jail there now, it’s all modern, up to date.

And it’s quite interesting to go back to those places and remember when you rode up and down

the streets and on the sidewalks to keep out of the mud, on the wooden sidewalks, and sometimes

your horse falls through a piece of wood and it wouldn’t just throw you and sometimes you did

get in the mud. It’s quite interesting to look around and think of past memories. We used to keep

our horse in the corral when we wasn’t using ‘em there, when we were on foot in town and

ah.....it was also very interesting to when you get a call during the night if you had to go down

and get your horse out of the corral, why he was tired and ah....the corrals were wide open, I

mean they were open, no top corrals on ‘em, I mean just the fences there and the gates. And the

corrals there was as much mud and muck inside of the corral as there was outside and your horse

was standing up there leaning against something trying to get a little shut eye and tired too and

24

he’d probably been down and he was mud all over him. And when you’d have to go in and go in

and get your saddle out of the saddle house and out of the corral was saddle house and you’d go

in there and get that, hang it on the fence and then you’d get your rope and try to catch him and

he was mad as hell cause he had to go out of the corral. And finally you got a hold of your horse

and you put your saddle on him and he had mud over him, mud under the blanket and all over,

you went out in more mud and if you can visualize Stacy, if you can and Chuck, of the mud,

believe me it was something down there. And ah.....of course when it got dry, when it did get

dry, it got awful dry, dusty and dry.

That’s about all I know about this.....but I wanted to mention this field due to the fact that

ah.....you may at different times, work cases in the that area and you’ll have a little idea about the

place. I believe I previously stated before Stacy that ah....the day of the killing of Dan McDuffy,

it was a period of no rain, it was pretty dry, the roads were dry and the streets were dry, there

was none paved they were all dirt, and .....but dirt and dusty and ah.....at both Gladewater and

also Kilgore and in that area, there was not mud. And the same conditions existed at Gladewater

existed at Kilgore, other than Gladewater I would say was a little smaller town, Kilgore seemed

to be the center of operation. Of course we operated various other little town around there and

then we also had to operate over into Smith County and also over into Henderson County, two

more counties over there where the oil had branched over towards that.